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Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Christmas miracles come in all shapes and sizes. Some are
big, some quite small. Some are furry. And some involve men with bucket trucks.

Before we get to that, let’s just establish that I don’t consider
myself a cat person. I’ve even been known to poke fun at friends who use
Facebook as their cat’s personal online photo diary.

Growing up, my family always had cats and dogs, and I always
leaned toward the barking variety – in part because I found them more manageable
and thus more easily loved. Don’t get me wrong, I adore kittens, with their
rambunctious playfulness. But the aloofness of older cats always struck me as a
less than desirable trait for pets or companions -- though it’s a quality I can
also admire.

So it was with great trepidation that my wife and I finally
caved last fall and brought a kitten into our family’s world. Our four kids had
been bugging us for a kitty for a while, to go along with the family dog and
various fish.

We found one through the local cat rescue group, the CNY Cat Coalition, and their program
at PetSmart. I was the one who wandered alone into the coalition’s corner of
the store one fall day wondering if they had any kittens to adopt. I found
mostly older cats and just one pair of older kittens – sisters Luna and Tic.
They were a bit bigger than I’d envisioned, but a few moments in the “get to
know a cat room” and I knew I had to bring the wife and kids to meet the cats.

With the family in tow, I returned to the cat adoption
center later that day. As expected, the kids fell in love immediately. Luna, in
particular, seemed such an affectionate little being. While Tic bounced around
the little padded room, causing as much mischief as possible, Luna introduced
herself to the kids, rubbing up against their legs and settling onto their
laps.

There are few better examples of pure joy than that of a kid
meeting a kitten. My kids all fawned over their potential pets, and my wife and
I just watched them enjoy it.

Luna was the favorite, but Tic, too, earned some admirers. Suddenly,
we had a new dilemma: do we get one cat, or two?

After much back and forth, we determined we could only
handle one cat. So we applied to adopt Luna.

A few days later, she went home with us and joined our
family. Though I continued to stop by the adoption center for the next few
weeks to check on Tic, hoping she found a home. Eventually, she did. We still
think of her.

Fast forward a year, and Luna is fully a part of our family. She’s
grown up a bit, but she's still as affectionate as that first day we met her. She
sleeps in our eldest daughter’s bed each night, play/attacks us through the
banister at the top of the steps, and pushes the dog’s buttons.

She’s gotten in a
bit of trouble at times, as family members do. She’s had to learn not to
get on the counters – or more likely, not to do it when my wife or I are
around. And we’ve had to learn to keep the doors to outside shut. We knew going
into the cat thing that we wanted ours to be an indoor cat. It’s just safer
that way.

Luna didn’t quite understand the need to stay indoors and
has been darting out since early last Spring. The first few times she got out,
we scrambled into full panic mode – DefCat 4. The entire family would put on
shoes and go out to herd the cat back indoors. We got good at it.“Luna’s out!” Would be sounded, and we’d all
jump to our jobs.

Then, one time this summer, we couldn’t find her. We fretted
and worried, and I paced the yard while my daughter watched the doors. Still no
cat. We went inside to assess our options. A few hours later, into the evening,
Luna came back. She meowed at the door and walked in like nothing had happened.

After that we continued working to keep her in, but when she got out we didn’t panic. She always came back.
Sometimes she even did it when we called her name out the back door. And, as
the snow fell this fall, she seemed less eager to escape.

Then, on Monday, she got out again. Being just a few days
before Christmas, and the kids off of school for the break, we had a lot going
on that day. After her escape, no one panicked. My wife and I kept on working,
and the kids played and watched TV.Once
I had a break in the work action, I took them to the YMCA and then to the
Library.

The day passed, as each tends to, and before long we were
getting dinner ready when someone mentioned they hadn’t seen Luna lately.

“I think she got out earlier,” my wife said. “Has she come back?”

It was then that our eldest daughter, who has a special
connection to Luna, started to panic.

“She’s still out?!”...

“It’s freezing out there!”...

“She’s been out all day!”

All those were from her.

“Calm down!” I yelled.

I’ve been trying to impress on our pre-teen the need to stay
calm during times of crisis, as a clear head is essential. I teach her this by
yelling at the top of my lungs things like Calm Down and Just Chill.

Still, I figured Luna was likely fine and needed to prevent my
daughter from freaking out and putting the whole evening into a tailspin.

She gathered her thoughts a bit, and went to the door to
call for her. When she opened it she could hear the distant yowl of a cat.

“I hear her!”

She started to panic again. I did not. A few months back,
Luna had gotten herself stuck about 6 feet up a tree in our yard. She yowled
then too, and we quickly retrieved her. It was comical.

This time my daughter and I got on boots and jackets and went out the
back door into the darkness to find and retrieve our cat.

The yowls and meows were near constant, making it easy to
track. First the sound drew us toward the trees between our house and
the neighbors. I shone my iPhone flashlight while my daughter circled the grove
of trees.

Another meow sounded out, and my daughter turned and looked
even further into the neighbor’s yard.

“She’s over there,” she pointed in the general direction of
the neighbor’s porch and the much taller grove of trees separating them from
the next house.

We stealthily entered our neighbor’s backyard.

Another yowl came and I figured she must be stuck under
their wooden deck, maybe unable to get out through the mesh under-fencing meant
to keep skunks and raccoons away.But
then another came, and my daughter started looking almost straight up and
pointing through the darkness to the tall trees.

“She’s in those trees!” she whisper-screamed.

No way, I thought.

We hurried across the yard and found ourselves at the base
of a 45 foot pine tree.

A “Meow!” came down through the branches.

“Luna?!” my daughter returned.

I shone my iPhone light up the trunk of the pine. Through
branches and needles, it illuminated the first twenty feet or so. Yet, no
visual sign of the cat. Still, we knew we had the right tree; It was just a
matter of how high she was.
﻿

That white spot that looks like a star
is actually our cat atop a 45-foot tall pine.

We assessed our options. Could we climb? The tree was tall,
but the first few feet seemed climbable.My daughter grabbed a lower branch and started. Like I said, she loves
this cat.

I convinced her we needed to get a visual first, even though
it was dark out. We hustled back to the house to get a proper flashlight and
brief my wife on the situation.

“Luna’s up a tree!” our daughter informed the family.Cat up a tree? Big deal, right? Was the
general reaction. Just get her down.

I got a better flashlight and returned with my daughter to
the neighbor’s yard. From a distance away from the tree, I shone the light
slowly up through its midsection as I called the cat, hoping she’d look my
way and return the shine through her eyes. Up and up I scanned. Then, almost to
the top, I saw the telltale reflection of cat’s eyes in the dark: she was way up
a tree.

By my calculation, the tree was close to 45 feet tall.
Luna’s eyes showed her to be about 5 feet from the top.

My daughter gasped when she saw, and started to freak out
again. I didn’t stop her this time.

Back at home, I told the family that Luna was really up a
tree. Like, we-can’t -get-her up. After coming to assess the situation and a
debate about whether we could actually climb the tree – which we couldn’t, and
even if we could, it wouldn’t be smart – my wife and I returned to the house to
research what to do. My daughter stayed with the tree and her cat in the cold.

For research we turned to the usual source: the internet. My
wife Googled “how to get cats out of trees,” and I posted a general request to
Facebook. The internet/social media world responded and advice flooded in.

We soon discovered people are divided into two camp on this
subject:The put-sardines-at-the-bottom-of-the-tree
camp, and the I’ve-never-seen-a-cat-skeleton-in-a-tree camp.

Input and anecdotes came from both the “Coaxing” and the
“Tough Love” world views.All of it came
with genuine concern (well, most of it).

Put a bowl of food at the bottom, and she‘ll come down when
she’s hungry. My friend’s cat was up a tree for three days before it decided to
come down. Have you tried spraying her with a hose? Throw snowballs above her? A
laser pointer? I have a 40 foot ladder you can borrow. Call the fire
department. Give me a 12 gauge and I’ll get your cat down (No one really said
this last one, but the sentiment was there).

Most of the advice from friends came without them fathoming exactly
how frigging high the cat was. I couldn’t throw a snowball that high with
accuracy. Even the tallest ladder was too short, taking into account the
angles. Plus, there was nothing sturdy to lean it up against that high in the
tree.

The main problem with most of the advice was that it also came
with the assumption that the cat was just being stubborn. I knew from the yowls
that she wasn’t stubborn, she was panicking too. Maybe even stuck somehow, with
a leg between branches or something.

We kept reading and researching.

It turns out – based on what we read-- that cats don’t
always come down. Their claws are great at climbing up, and not so good at
climbing down. If you’ve ever seen a cat try to shimmy down a tree backwards,
you know it isn’t pretty. Could she do that from 40 feet up? Not likely.

Fear, immaturity, and old age can all contribute to a cat
getting literally stuck high up in a tree. If the cat can’t figure out how to
get down, the elements, other animals, hunger and thirst are all threats. The
internet holds a number of examples of cats atop tall pines in particular that
didn’t end well. Then I began to panic.

At some point, my wife called the local fire department, which
seems kind of cliché, but was clearly worth a try. They said they were on a real
call, but we could call back later. Then they said they’d most likely spray her
with water. I knew the temps were supposed to hover around freezing that night, and
figured spraying her now was not the best option. Plus, one anecdote mentioned
a cat jumping from a tall pine to avoid being sprayed and dying from the fall. It
seemed we weren’t there yet.

Meanwhile, I found a story in the local paper from a few
years back that said another family got their cat down from a tree with the help
of an unemployed arborist. These are expert tree climbers, among other things.
And it just so happens that the local college – SUNY ESF – has the best
arborist program around.I found a list of
New York State arborist and sent a longshot e-mail to one listed as living
nearby.

Willing to try some of the other advice found and received,
I went to the store to buy wet food (which has a more pungent smell), a laser
pointer, and a better flashlight.

The better flashlight gave us a solid visual on the cat. She
was moving around a bit, even seemed to climb up higher from when we first
found her. At least she wasn’t physically stuck, I thought. The laser pointer
was cool, but failed to draw her attention. So, we set the wet food at the
bottom of the tree and then gathered on the sidewalk with a few neighbors who’d
come to inquire about the drama – the cat’s meows transmitted throughout the
block.

We learned from neighbors that she’d been crying like that since
at least 2 p.m. It was getting close to 9:00 p.m., by this point, which meant she’d
been up the tree almost 7 hours already.

We talked again about the fire company. And the water
spraying thing. Then another neighbor mentioned the local utility company,
National Grid. They have tree trimming crews. And I remembered seeing a few
Grid personnel on the list of arborist. Sounded like a good next option.I stepped inside and sent another kindly
worded, but desperate, e-mail to an arborist.

It kept getting later and we exhausted the options we could
reasonably pursue that night without potentially causing more harm than good.

After some more tears, and threats of sleeping outside by my
daughter, we left the food at the foot of the tree and shut the rescue
operation down for the night.

My daughter was distraught. I wasn’t particularly optimistic
either. It was going to be a cold night and, by the time I went to bed, I’d
determined in my mind that Luna wasn’t going to come down without help. If she
made it through the night, we’d need either the fire company to send a ladder
truck or an arborist to get our cat back alive.

That night, my daughter cried herself to sleep while my wife
assured her we’d solve this. I slept on the couch by the French doors, hoping
to let her in should she find her way down. Eventually, we all fell asleep.

At about 1 a.m., I woke with a start and heard the rain
pouring through the gutters. Crap. I checked the temperature, 32 degrees. Well,
at least maybe this would force her down – like the fire company’s hose. I put
on boots and a jacket and went into the back yard, shining my new flashlight to
the tall grove of trees across the neighbor’s yard. Luna’s eyes shone back. And
then she let out a yowl. She hadn’t succumbed to the elements yet.But she hadn’t budged either.

I went back to the couch. And I worried that if we didn’t
solve this, we may have seen the end of our wee kitty.

The next morning, as the sky was just starting to lighten
with the soon-rising sun, I returned to the tree.It was silent.“Luna?” I called up.

Nothing.“Luna?"

Then she meowed back. She was still there.

The light of day made things seem better, but not much. I
still knew we’d need some help to get this cat down. We had to find someone with the means to get her down and some Christmas spirit to spare. And, frankly, I didn’t know
if it would happen. To top it off, Christmas was just two days away. Would this
be known as the Christmas the cat died? Thoughts like that had been creeping
into my head since I first saw her 40 feet up a pine. But I’d kept them at bay.
Now those thoughts were winning.

I’ve been around long enough to know that sometimes things
don’t work out. That sometimes that glimmer of hope isn’t a glimmer at all.
But, I also know that sometimes it is.

About 7 a.m., I checked my e-mail.And I found a glimmer.

A National Grid arborist had written me back:

“Good Morning Mr.
Ruddy.Did your cat come down?”

I wrote back:

“No, sir.She has not budged.I just checked on her
and she's still up there crying. We tried can food at the bottom of the tree, a
laser pointer, waiting and it rained. I've believed for a while we have to find
a way to get to her. Thanks for getting
back to me.”

A few minutes later, this came:

“This is well outside
our service mandates but call my cell …”

I woke the family and within half an hour a service truck
from National Grid was parked in my neighbor’s driveway as a crew of three men used
a bucket truck with 70 foot reach to retrieve our little Luna.

While they were working I asked the arborist if people were calling them all the time with this sort of thing. He said that in 20 years, this was just his 5th cat rescue. In all it took them about fifteen minutes, but it meant everything
to our family. We cannot thank them enough.

Christmas miracles do come in all shapes and sizes. Some are
big, some quite small. Our was furry. And
it involved men with a bucket truck.Merry Christmas.

Saturday, December 20, 2014

This is exceptionally lame. But, then again, it’s been that
kind of year.First, we’d like to thank all the family and friends who had
the decency, organizational skills, and mastery of time to send us holiday
cards. We truly appreciate each and every one.Appreciate may be an understatement; We celebrate each one. Cards
arrive each day and the kids line up at the kitchen counter next to the fresh
pile of mail for the chance to open one. They revel in it. After all, it’s not often
that we get mail addressed to the whole family.

“Is this for me?” They say with excitement.

“Yes. … It’s for all of us,” is our standard reply.

The kids consider it an honor to open the envelope and be the
first to hold the card, often pictures of other families, or joyous Christmas
scenes, or ornate designs sent from relatives in Scotland. Then we take the
card and display it in a special place – the mantle, or
the decorative basket (that's not a euphemism). One year we used the cards to make the shape of a tree on
the “school art” wall.

We love getting holiday cards. So, here comes the lame part. I don’t even want to say it. Honestly,
I feel like I’m a failure as a parent and a person, but here goes … We didn’t
do a card this year.

I know, I know. The shame! Trust me, we’re feeling it.

What can we say? It’s been a tough year. We meant to do it.
We started talking about it in November, fretting that we didn’t have one good
family photo for this year’s card. Then time kept slipping away, and with just a
few days to go till the big day, we did
the math on how long it would take for Snapfish to produce the thing, then send
it to us, and for us to turn it around and get it out the door.We figured most people would get the card by
Presidents’ Day. So, we've pulled the plug on the 2014 holiday mailing.

It just wasn’t in the cards this year. (Sorry for the bad
pun, too)

We got close, though.I even stayed up late one night designing a potential card.

In PA, there's a section of US 222 that was only partially constructed
for many years, earning the nickname "The Road to Nowhere."
Likewise, this is "The Card to No One."

The whole episode got me thinking that the holiday cards
thing -- as nice as it is -- can really be a hassle. Sure, it’s a great
tradition. But it’s a hard one. Think of all the hours we each spend keeping lists up to date, worrying about photos throughout the year, designing cards, addressing envelopes and licking stamps. It also brings with it a lot of pressure, and has become a form of artistic competition among friends.Rather than societal guilt for not doing cards, we really should give special recognition to the people who actually get them done.

So here's to everyone who got their cards done this year. Most of you, anyway. I hear that a
lot of famous people and big-time elected officials, who often have thousands on their
card lists, hire companies to do the whole holiday card design, mail merge and
distribution.

Then again, as long as we’re ridiculously wealthy, I’d also get
someone to come in each night to do the dishes.Because who really wants to do dishes after a big meal when you’ve got
four kids to put to bed.… Oh, and laundry.
We’d definitely get a laundry service. Heck, someone
could actually move into our basement and do that full time. We could just send
food down in a basket every so often.

But that’s it: just laundry service, dishes after a big
meal, and the whole Christmas card thing.

Monday, December 8, 2014

Their school makes them write stuff
all the time, obviously. But they also do it when they’re not required to, just
when a story moves them or they grow bored with sneaking an iPhone to build a new
Minecraft world.They write just for fun. That makes them writers in my view.With all these little authors running around I thought, “Why
not share some of their work with the world.” (Quote marks to indicate me talking
to myself). To which I responded, “Yes.
Why not?” So that’s what I’m doing. As said before, it’s my blog and I’ll do what the
heck I want.So, here’s the first installment of Kid Writings, this short one
scrawled on a few pages of a random notepad, written by my 3rd grade
daughter:

Once Upon a time there
was a king.

He lived in a happy village
in a happy state in a happy country in a happy continent in a not so happy world. There were
fights and wars, but that wasn’t a problem for him to worrie about.

His problem was that
his Rooster was so tired that it couldn’t skwak to wake the king up. So every day the princess, the king’s
daughter, had to jump on him to wake him up.

And there were even bigger
problems when the princess had school. Plus he couldn’t do any of his royal chores!

Then one day the king
bought an alarm clock and the whole kingdom was jolly again!

Thursday, December 4, 2014

I can’t decide if I’m getting better at this whole parenting
gig, or if I’ve officially lost my mind.

Compare a scenario from a few years ago to a similar one
recently. About two years back, as part of an ill-conceived Mother’s Day bonus
gift, I took all four kids with me to Wegman’s for our weekly supply run.

I don’t recall much because most of the actual memories
are suppressed, but it was mayhem. You’ve
surely heard the expression herding cats. Now imagine herding cats in a crowded
grocery store while trying to get enough food to last a family of six for a
week.The kids were everywhere.And I was an anxious and jerky mess, spending the
whole time trying to keep my little monsters from destroying first the produce
section, then the meat section, then the dairy, then the cereal aisle. You get
the picture.Many a “stop,” “please” and
don’ts” were uttered through clenched teeth, followed by stern instructions that
were summarily ignored. I couldn’t tell
if the people who witnessed our little traveling show were expressing empathy or
annoyance.

Somehow, we survived the trip, and I subsequently started
taking blood pressure medicine.

If you see this with my mug under it at Wegmans, don't even tell me about it.

Wegmans survived too – though it seemed touch and go for a
spell there. I kept waiting for surveillance video to surface on “America’s Funniest
Videos: Overwhelmed Parents” edition, or for the store to post a photo with my
mug shot covered by the “no sign” – red circle with bar across it -- banishing me to
shop at Topps for the rest of my life. But nothing like that happened. (Heck,
they didn’t even ban us after Vomitgate
2013).

Flashforward to a few days ago. Again, I found myself at a
crowded Wegmans with all four children – all slightly older but equally mischievous.
This time they were there with me because they had to be. Mom’s been out of
town a lot lately attending to family health matters. Her sister just had a baby, and
her mom just had a bone marrow transplant. (Thanks for all the support
and prayers). Needless to say, it's been a tough row of late for all involved.

Meanwhile, our kids gotta eat. So, off to Wegmans we went on a recent Sunday as
an unruly, ravenous pack.

Was it mayhem? Maybe. Truthfully, I didn’t notice or really care.

Instead of herding cats, I took the less
utilized "mother duck" approach. I just went about my shopping business and let
them follow in the wake.Rather than “Stop,”
“Please,” and “Don’t,” I just announced the occasional “C’mon.”

﻿

Notice the cavalier over-the-shoulder glance by this Ruddy Duck. That's me at the Grocery store.

I had the 4-year-old boy in the cart with me, so that helped
matters.But I just went down my shopping
list, and the other three ran behind. I even lost
them for a bit, as the girls wandered into the flower section as I tried to
decide which type of coconut milk to get for my Panang curry. (I went with the
lower fat … we’ll see).

But I didn’t panic, and they found me again two aisles later.

Maybe it’s because they are a little bit older, or maybe I’m
a little bit wiser, but the no-stress approach worked out just fine. As for the people who witnessed our adventure,
their looks of expression were either awe or disgust, I can’t decide.But you know what, I don’t really care. Like I said, I may
have completely lost it -- or found it -- I don’t actually know.

Friday, November 21, 2014

It’s Saturday night in downtown Boston. I’m pacing
the sidewalk in front of a gastropub, outside with the smokers. I’m not
smoking. Instead I’m canceling a 9 p.m. dinner reservation across town at a
restaurant I’ve never been to, and making a 9:30 reservation at another I'd never heard of until ten minutes before, all on
the advice of a stranger.Guide books be damned. The decision is made. Now let’s hope
it's the right one.There are lessons in travel, if you’re open to them. More so than just in the discovery of new
places or the facts behind a historic sight, but actual instructions for life. A
weekend trip my wife and I took to Boston recently contained one lesson that repeated
itself to the point of being unavoidable.We went to Boston to celebrate my wife’s birthday. It was a
round-numbered one, so important. She dreamed of going to Italy for this
milestone, but with four kids and all the bills that come with that, Boston was
the best we could afford -- and we could barely afford that. Still, she was
born in Massachusetts, so it kind of made sense to visit the City on a Hill in
celebration of her existence. Plus, I’d never been there, despite the
wanderlust of my youth. So, to Boston it was.When it comes to things like vacations, I’m usually a bit of
a planner. Before a trip I’ll grab tour books and surf the web for weeks
in advance to find out everything I can: Places to eat, colorful markets,
sections of town that just shouldn’t be missed. I find it and put it on a list. Then I map out the days of the trip. We’ll wake early, walk here, eat
there, shop here, drink this, have lunch at that place, watch this show, dine
here, nightcap there, and then back to the hotel. Every day I’ve got a schedule
in my head, even if I don’t always share it.Before this trip, however, things were different.For starters, we’d both been so busy with work and kids and
whatnot that I didn’t do one-tenth the usual research. Second, it was her
birthday and her town -- and no place for my annoying vacation control issues --
so I figured I’d just do whatever she wanted. Other than booking hotels, I
didn’t make a single list of sights we had to see, places we had to go, or
things we had to do.Of course, once the vacation started so did my obsession
with order. Redefining “Old’ In
the MountainsGetting older is never easy. Luckily, what counts as old is
a relative term.The first night of our weekend we spent at a sleepy inn in
the Berkshires, as planned. We figured it nearly impossible to work all day Friday
then drive the five hours to Boston and still get there at a decent hour. So we
broke it up with a stop at the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, a little village immortalized in a painting
by Norman Rockwell.The innkeepers also own
County Curtains, and my wife had always been curious about the inn, so it was an
easy choice.

Red Lion Inn -- Stockbridge, Mass.

When we told my mother-in-law we were planning to stay at
the Red Lion, she replied, “That place is old.” And that pretty much sums it up.The Red Lion began as a general store in 1773, becoming an
inn in the decades after – one of just a few continuously operating inns from
that era in New England. It is old, literally. I’d describe it as closer to
charming than worn on the spectrum, but it’s definitely on that spectrum. The wood plank floors, bent from centuries of
settling, creak with each step. Doorways lean one way, stair cases the other. I
kept telling my wife, the old inn’s been around for generations and would
certainly stand through one more night. It did. It was also clean, and the canopy bed proved surprisingly comfortable – an important matter, because when the parents of four kids get
away for a weekend, all they really want is uninterrupted sleep.We’d gotten to town too late to eat that first night,
winding up in the old tavern in the old basement just after the kitchen and
everything else in Stockbridge closed for the evening. So our hunger woke us early
the next day. As my wife readied herself, I inquired with the Innkeepers about
a good place for breakfast.For those who don’t know, I take food seriously. I not only
eat it every day, but I also like to cook it, and love to find places that cook
it well. We’re not talking fine dining here, necessarily – though I’m okay with
that on occasion. I’m more into cool, interesting places with well-prepared
food, whether it's a four star restaurant or a street vendor makes no
difference.Finding food is how I like to explore a place and get to
know it. That’s why I’m such a fan of Anthony Bourdain. He does it for a
living.Whenever I go someplace new these days, I ask myself “Where
Would Tony Eat?” WWTE? If we can find a place worthy of Tony (which is what us friends
call him) then it’s a good day. Again, that’s the kind of thing I usually seek out
in the research phase of the trip. This time, we had to just ask the innkeepers,
who pointed us to the Elm StreetMarket.I wasn’t at all worried when we had to pass two other places
capable of serving breakfast to get to the market, though my wife grew
skeptical.
﻿

Elm Street Market

On appearances alone, the Elm Street Market seemed my kind
of place for breakfast, if only for the questionable atmosphere. It’s a grocery
store, butcher shop, deli and breakfast place all crammed into a tiny, little
storefront market. Along one side of the store stands a wall of coolers holding milk
and eggs. Across from it, separated by an aisle of groceries, sits a five-seat
breakfast counter, propping up locals as they hovered over plates of pancakes, eggs
and corned-beef hash. Behind the counter, a hulking short-order cook worked the
grill, while a frail, older gentleman doubled as server and cashier. We ordered
at the counter and sat at one of a handful of tables squeezed up against the
storefront windows.

As we sat there, we began to wonder if it was actually the
best place in town for breakfast or just the one in the good graces of the
innkeepers. We were starving, so the food did the job just fine. Yet it also
answered our question. We later learned the inn actually owns the market and
there are better breakfast places – which we passed on our walk there.
That morning we learned a general lesson about advice from unknown
innkeepers.But that’s hardly the grand
lesson of this trip.

After breakfast, we strolled through the village of
Stockbridge, self-described as “America’s most famous main street.” Nothing was
open yet.A cute town, but if you’ve
seen the painting that made Stockbridge famous than you’ve also seen the whole
of this quaint little place. Our stroll took less than ten minutes. We checked out of the Inn and headed for Boston.

Along the way, we took a detour through the village of
Lenox, another Berkshire mainstay. It had a bit more going on than the more famous
one. And, though we thoroughly enjoyed our night in the mountains, we decided that
if we ever stayed in the Berkshires again, we’d skip Stockbridge and go to
Lenox.

Still, on this trip, we had a grander destination in mind.

Finding Food and Trusting
Fate in Boston

I’m not a big believer in fate. People who’ve been through some crap and seen
random badness in their lives generally have one of two reactions: either it
was meant to be, or there’s no way it was meant to be. I fall in the second
category.

I also don’t believe “things will always work out,” as many
are apt to comment when things aren’t working out. Maybe that’s why I try to
plan things. To give fate a hand, and to make
things work out.

But, there’s no denying that sometimes it seems the universe
conspires to make things go a certain way, despite our best efforts to push in
another direction.And that brings us to
Boston.

We began in Boston as America began -- at Faneuil Hall in downtown.
After strolling the shops, the outdoor produce market and the indoor food hall,
which was more like a food court than a true market, we were hungry again and ended
up in the waiting area of the Union Oyster House, which has the distinction of America’s oldest restaurant. There’s that theme again.

Standing there, convincing ourselves to wait forty minutes
for our turn to eat, my wife expressed her concern that we were in a possible
tourist trap. I looked around, and low and behold she was right. We also
remembered that we don’t like oysters that much. So we left.

Once on the street we wandered in the direction of a few restaurants
that were showing up on the Urban Spoon app. That random choice led us to the
heart of Little Italy. We’d been told by pre-trip advisors to go there, and I had
planned in my head to do that for dinner. Now we were there for lunch.

Boston’s Little Italy, also called the North End, bursts
with restaurants, bakeries and bars, and bustles with trendy locals and
tourists alike. We were overwhelmed with choices. I was extra overwhelmed because I
never expected to find so much of Italy in a town I always thought of as Irish.

We first looked for a place a friend from home told us about,
but couldn’t find it. We wandered some more, got hungrier. We settled on a seemingly
trendy place, where Tony
would likely have eaten, joining a line of urban hipsters that stretched down
the block. We stood there, not moving, for too long. Then we jumped out of line
and wandered to a fine little Italian place called Gennero’s, with fresh pasta and room enough
to feed two hungry travelers right then and there. It was delicious.

﻿

Café Victoria-- Little Italy, Boston

After our late lunch, we joined the masses for an Italian style coffee and cake
at Cafe Victoria. It wasn’t Italy,
but it was as close as we could get. Full and groggy from the meal and cake, we checked into our
hotel to get settled and rest up before dinner. Our choice of accommodations in
downtown Boston was one thing we had little say in. By the time I booked the
place, every other hotel nearby was full or way out of our price range. The Mandarin
Oriental, for example, wanted over $1000 bucks for their last available rooms -- I'm guessing a suite.
So we stayed at the Omni Parker House,
which turns out to be the oldest continuously operating hotel in America. Go figure.

I swear I didn’t pick all these old places to make my wife
feel young (or old); it just happened.

As it turns out, the Omni Parker House has quite a history,
particularly with Boston’s literary elite. As for me – an upstate New York
literary underling – I was struck most by how damn small the room was for the
price. And they didn’t even have free WiFi. Other than that, there was little
to complain about. We could see the Charles River from the window and the bed
was comfortable (though a bit small).

One thing I knew about our plan for the rest of the evening,
I wanted to have a plan. We spent part of our time at the hotel that afternoon researching
restaurants for dinner. After all, this was to be the climactic meal of the
trip -- Saturday night dinner, right? I figured, since we’d had Italian for lunch, we should have seafood for
dinner. With that, I searched a bit and picked Boston Sail Loft, and then made a reservation. My wife
was skeptical of the choice because one review put it on the list of
Boston’s “douchiest” restaurants, saying it “is well-stocked with the finest
assholes of New England’s famous prep schools.” As assholes go, prep school ones are a special breed. Despite concerns, I needed to
have a plan and worried we wouldn’t eat if we didn’t have a reservation. So I
booked it.

My wife also picked a gastropub called Stoddard’s near
our hotel for a cocktail before dinner. Our plan set, we got ready, primped and headed out for the evening. We arrived at the gastropub to find a relatively young crowd gathered in the cavernous, rectangular dark wood room, complete with old-fashioned street lamps as light posts and a thirty-foot bar adorned with a long line of taps. When two seats opened at the bar, we sat. What can you say, we're old.
﻿
﻿

Stoddard's -- Boston

It
was at Stoddard's that the stars aligned in our favor and fate, or more
likely luck, took over.When our luck
arrived, it didn’t come in the package you’d expect, unless a lonely, older
woman sitting alone at a bar, surrounded by 30-something hipsters was expected.

I didn’t see her at first, but then she started
talking. In the first words I heard she cursed, “Kids these days and all their
politically correct crap.” My initial thought was, are speaking to me?She was the oldest person in the bar by
decades not years. And she was dressed for going out on a Saturday, her hair in
a neat bun. Despite looking worn and
tired, she had fight in her voice.

“When I was young comedians would tell offensive jokes, and
nobody cared,” she said to me as a more formal introduction. I assumed then I was in for a
tough night at Stoddard’s.

Over the next hour or so, this life-long Bostonian shared
tidbits with us about her life as a nurse, and how she’d seen it all, and
several more things that began with “Kids these days...” I wondered if she thought we were kids too, or her compatriots.

Eventually, talk turned to our kids, and our lives, and then our plans
for dinner. "The
Sail Loft?" she said as she shrugged her shoulders, added a “Meh.”

So, I asked where we should go, and she said told us, “Mare.”She’d never been there, but she’d always wanted to.
It was a date place and for special occasions. She hadn’t had either
lately.

At the next lull in her soliloquy on life, I ducked outside and called for a late
reservation at a restaurant recommended by a perfect stranger who’d never been
there -- and I cancelled our other reservation at the so-called douchy place. An hour later,
after our new friend left with half her meal in a bag for her dog at home, we hopped
a cab and found our way to Mare – an
Italian-style seafood restaurant on Boston’s North End.

To keep this long story short enough that I don't have to get it bound and numbered, lets just say that our meal at Mare was one of the best and most memorable
we’ve ever had, second only in my opinion to a Friday night BBQ at Foxy's on Jost Van
Dyke during our honeymoon.

Despite changing my sacred plans, we ate well that night in
Boston.

I was beginning to see a pattern in our trip, that we had
our best luck when our plans didn’t work out, our whims took over, and life and luck led us in
another direction. The next day the pattern repeated.

We woke early again, long before 10 a.m. Sunday brunch
service. To pass the time, we took a walk through Boston Common – a smaller
version of Central Park – headed in the direction of a brunch place on the list
supplied by the hotel.After a leisurely
stroll, we arrive at the restaurant 5 minutes before it opened. There was
only one problem; Nobody else was waiting to go in. After some
consternation on my part, and some coaxing by my now wiser wife, we left to find someplace else, anyplace else.

Forty minutes later, we found a much better breakfast option
on Newbury Street, Boston's version of Rodeo Drive. Our next few hours
were spent perusing the shops -- exactly the way my wife should spend her
birthday. The trip felt complete. And when the early afternoon arrived, I was
ready to go home. But my wife had other plans.

She thought we should have one last meal before we left. It
was 2 p.m. I wanted to get on the road, sticking to the plan I'd hatched in my head. If we left at 2
p.m., we’d get home at about 7 p.m., I said.But
we needed to eat, she said. We needed to go, I said. We hadn’t had chowder, she
said. Fine, I said.

Our final quest, in search of chowder, took us to Boston’s Seaport District.
Again, I had no idea about the place. But just a short jaunt from downtown we
were surrounded by concrete docks and warehouses on one side and new hotels on
the other. Interspersed between the docks and warehouses were recognizable
restaurants like Legal Sea Foods and Rosa Mexicana.It was industrial longshoreman meets modern
development.

I figured we could find chowder at any number of places, if
we could only find a parking spot. As a newly burgeoning section of Boston,
there seemed a severe shortage of places to leave the car. We drove around for too
long, circling the blocks like I used to when we’d go to Adams Morgan for dinner.
It sucked. I was ready to go home.

Then we took a wrong turn and ended up next to another old warehouse.
We looked up and saw a sign that said, “Parking for Yankee Lobster Customer’s
Only.”That was the name of the tiny
store front with the red awning we’d just passed while attempting a three-point
turn.

“Look up Yankee Lobster,” I said to my wife, who had been
Googling chowder places on her iPhone.

“On it,” she said. Seconds later, Google and other sites
reported that the Yankee Lobster was a perfectly fine place for a cup of Chowder. So we
parked, and went in.

Thank god we didn’t find a spot earlier and wind up at Legal Seafoods, or some other Godforsaken chain.

﻿

Yankee Lobster Co. -- Boston

Once inside the little storefront, we knew we’d arrived at
fresh seafood Nirvana. A crowded room greeted us with sideways glances, as
people refused to take their faces away from their soup. Fresh fish and lobster
crammed the cooler, colorful specials were drawn on the chalk board. Hipsters?
There were hipsters. Not just eating there, but working there too. Hipsters were running the joint.

We waited in a short line and ordered our food at the counter, as was the design of the place. I got the
chowder and fresh fish fry. My wife got grilled lobster tail – lobster on her
birthday.I always ask, Where Would Tony
Eat? He’d eat at Yankee Lobster.

We sat outside in the courtyard next to the dining room,
because it was too full inside and the sun was shining on us on a warm November
day. Then the food arrived.

YankeeLobster Co. is not only cramped, dingy, fresh and beautiful, the food is damn
good too.

﻿

Thanks, Boston. It was fun.

I don’t believe in fate. But sometimes the universe does
conspire in your favor. And boy did it. So, on this trip to Boston, I learned a something about plans. I
learned that we can make all the plans we want. Plans are good, after all; They
give us structure, and help us achieve goals. But sometimes the real beauty
happens when we go off the plan and improvise.

It makes me think about the life my wife and I have built.
It pains me that I couldn’t take her to the actual Italy for her birthday. And
that so many of our plans haven’t worked out like we wanted or hoped.

But I look around at our home and our lives and all the
little people in it, and I know that many wonderful things have happened that we
never imagined, despite all our plans.

So. That’s it.

I'm going to keep planning things, because that’s what I
do. But I'll always be ready to improvise. Because, sometimes luck and fate do
take over. And sometimes, things do work out.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Talk about reeling in the years. My 11-year-old daughter ‘s
school is hosting a roller skating party. That is not a typo.And no, you have not gone through a time warp
back to 1984. An actual roller skating
party. Not roller blading or ice skating, but that thing you usually only see nowadays
when overly-tattooed women bash into each other in the aging female hipster
version of men’s softball.

When I heard about this 6th grade roller skating party, the memories
came rolling back.

Cool skates. No, that's not an oxymoron.

Ah, roller skating. If you grew up in the 80s, in Maryland,
in the United States, on this planet, then you likely went roller skating a few
times, at actual roller skating rinks.

“Dad? What’s a roller skating rink?”

Well, it’s like an ice skating rink without the ice. Instead
of a hot chocolate stand and a Zamboni, they have bad pizza and an arcade. The music’s
a little louder, the crowd a little edgier, and they have special skating intervals
just for cool kids called “The Backward Skate.”

Growing up, my brothers and I went skating all the time. We’d
beg our parents for a ride to the rink on a given Saturday, usually along with
a few neighborhood friends. Then we’d get our bandanas for our back pockets,
tie on the super cool, tan rented skates, and zoom around the rink at whet felt
like lightning speed. Between 5th and 8th grade, we
probably went skating once a month (a total exaggeration when I do the actual math).

Going to the roller rink was our kid version of a social scene.
Then, eventually, we got our own skates. When not at the rink, we’d skate in
the unfinished basement, often to music and then with hockey sticks as we got
older. As it turns out, my wife – who grew up in Pennsylvania – also skated a
ton as a kid.And they too would skate
in the unfinished part of their basement.I imagine lots of 80s kids did the same.

I remember the music at the roller rink most of all. When
the memories came flooding back, I immediately went to the internet and found “99 Red Balloons,” and “Electric Avenue”; my
wife started singing “Calendar Girl.” (Clearly, I went to an edgier rink than she
did).

Musical interlude:

The last skating party I remember was my freshman year of
high school, which would make circa 1986. I don’t
know what happened to roller skating after that. It just faded. Maybe it's still cool in some parts of the country. Maybe it was never cool.

Now, my daughter’s skating party is going be held at the
gym, because roller rinks really don’t exist anymore (At least not around here). Most have been turned
into parking lots, or housing developments, or … ice rinks.

But, I’m still glad to see roller skating make a comeback.Well, sort of a comeback. My daughter doesn’t want to go to the party
because she said it’s too dorky.

Clearly
I’ll have to teach her how to skate backwards.

If you roller skated growing
up, share your memories. What songs do you remember skating to?

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About Me

I'm a writer, a husband and a father of four. I once worked in news in Washington, D.C., and served as a speechwriter for a spell. Now I work in upstate New York, teach and help raise our kids. This is where I write about it.